ABCs: Sunday papers post double digit print declines, digital growth slows
New figures on newspaper sales show half of Australia’s Sunday newspapers, including the Canberra Times, Sun-Herald, Sunday Territorian, Sunday Age and Sunday Times, have posted double digit declines in their print circulations.
The latest Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) data shows a continuation of the sustained declines of print across the board for newspapers, whilst the uptake for digital subscriptions among mastheads released by News Corp Australia and Fairfax Media continues to slow, with News Corp’s Herald Sun showing quarter on quarter growth of just 0.24 per cent or 123 digital subscriptions.
Digital Subscriptions
An analysis of the latest figures by Fusion Strategy noted that while declines had moderated somewhat with the overall print market falling 9.12 per cent in the September quarter, digital was not making up for the decline.
“Print falls have moderated year on year,” said Steve Allen, media analyst for Fusion Strategy “but digital cannot, or rather, has not, made up all the ground.”
Fairfax’s Melbourne masthead The Age had the biggest drop with its weekday edition posting a year on year circulation fall of 19.6 per cent, shedding 26,303 print editions from 133,981 last year to 107,678 for June to September of 2014.
On the weekend the Saturday edition of The Age declined 8.2 per cent to 182,187 copies, while the Sunday Age fell 11.6 per cent. The survey also gives the first annualised numbers since Fairfax put up its paywall on its digital assets in July last year, which show growth steadying out after the initial surge for The Age rising 37 per cent on weekdays from 98,788 to 133,926 digital subscriptions. Quarter on quarter analysis of the numbers shows subscribers grew 4.47 per cent in the most recent quarter.
However, the number of new digital subscribers in the last 12 months more than offsets the decline in print sales in numbers, with The Age shedding 26,000 print editions but gaining 36,000 digital subscribers.
It was a similar picture at its sister newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald where the weekday print edition recorded a 14.5 per cent decline in sales to hit 116,838 editions, down from 136,623 last year. The Saturday edition of the Herald posted a 7.6 per cent decline in print sales, while the Sun Herald continues to struggle posting a 14.2 per cent decline to 235,045 copies shifted on average.
In digital subscriptions on a weekday the SMH now has 132,938 paying users, up 35.4 per cent on last year, but it too saw growth stall in the quarter on quarter analysis with a 4.4 per cent increase from 127,334 this quarter. The slowing in Fairfax digital subscriptions growth does come in the same week that the SMH.com.au, which allows 30 free stories before users hit a ‘porous’ paywall, retained the position of top news website in Australia with some 3.8m unique users in October.
News Corp’s national broadsheet The Australian has shed more than 10,000 copies on weekdays and close to 20,000 copies on the weekend. The weekday edition dropped 9.2 per cent to 106,053, while The Weekend Australian sold 231,349. In digital subscriptions rose 17.1 per cent year on year, but again there is a levelling out quarter on quarter with 745 new subscribers added since the last quarter when it had 64,821, a rise of 1.4 per cent.
However, The Australian has this year doubled the price of a digital subscription from $3 to $6 per week and also raised its cover price and subscription price on its print products.
Fairfax’s national masthead, the business focused Australian Financial Review, continues to stem its losses following the May release which saw its weekend edition tumble 23.1 per cent.
This quarter saw a year on year decline of 9.8 per cent on weekdays and 11.10 per cent on weekends. The AFR on a weekday now has 57,961 print sales, with 55,354 copies sold on weekends. Fairfax has never revealed the subscriber numbers for the long-standing and costly paywall on the masthead’s website.
Australia’s biggest-selling masthead the Herald Sun also saw 7-8 per cent circulation falls across all of its print editions. The weekday edition of the newspaper was down 8.6 per cent from 399,638 a year ago, to 365,133 this quarter. The Saturday edition was down 7.9 per cent while the Sunday Herald Sun lost more than 40,000 sales to reach 429,500, a decline of 8.7 per cent.
Year on year the Herald Sun’s digital subscriptions are up 34.1 per cent on weekdays as News has aggressively pushed the News+ subscription, but much of that growth came in the first quarter of 2014 when there was a 21.4 per cent spike driven by sign ups ahead of the AFL season. Quarter on quarter growth saw the masthead put on just 123 more copies, rising 0.24 per cent from 50,237 to 50,360.
The digital picture on other tabloid newspapers remains unclear as News Corp does not audit digital subscription numbers for The Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail, Adelaide Advertiser and Hobart Mercury.
While News would not comment on why it does not audit the digital products for those mastheads it has previously said: “We previously made the decision to audit The Australian and Herald Sun digital subs. The market was different then to now. It doesn’t give us any competitive advantage to announce the breakdown of the numbers at this time.”
The Northern Territory News shed 12.1 per cent for its weekday editions, falling to a circulation of 14,724. Fairfax’s Canberra Times shed 9.6 per cent on the weekday while West Australian Newspapers fell 8.8 per cent to 157,110.
Among the rest of News’s tabloid stable the Courier Mail remains the best performer with a decline this quarter of 5.5 per cent, with sales falling to 157,110 editions, while the Daily Telegraph posted a 6.4 per cent fall, the Mercury had a 6.9 per cent decline and The Adelaide Advertiser lost 8.8 per cent.
Among Saturday newspapers The NT News and Canberra Times were the worst performers, with declines of 16.3 per cent and 12.7 per cent respectively. The Daily Telegraph performed best with a decline of only 4.1 per cent while most other Saturday newspapers recorded falls of 6-9 per cent.
Schwartz Media’s The Saturday Paper, which launched in March, is still not participating in the audit and has said it will not do so until some time into the new year when its allocations have stabilised.
Among the ten Sunday newspapers, five posted double digit declines with the Sunday Territorian and Canberra Times again the worst performers, with declines of 14.9 and 14.8 per cent respectively. They were closely followed by News Corp’s Sunday Times which lost 32,360 sales in the last year to post sales of 208,126 last quarter.
In a tough Sunday newspaper market The Sunday Tasmanian was the best performer with a 7.10 per cent decline, while Australia’s highest-circulating newspaper The Sunday Telegraph dropped to 475,959, a decline of 7.9 per cent.
When invited to comment on the declines in circulation and slow growth in digital Fairfax and News Corp issued the following statements.
A spokesman for Fairfax noted: “Our print circulation is more profitable than ever. Profitable circulation and Fairfax’s fiercely independent journalism and content, ensures that the print editions of the mastheads continue to contribute to the growth and engagement of Fairfax’s audience.
“Across Fairfax Media’s mastheads, digital subscriptions have seen YOY increases. For The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the large percentage increases year on year of previous quarters are due to the comparison to the launch phase of digital subscriptions in quarter one of financial year2014
“It’s important to note that circulation data only shows part of the picture of the reach of our print and digital mastheads. The September 2014 EMMA results show the strength of Fairfax Media publications in cross platform audience readership and reach.”
News Corp also sought to highlight EMMA readership data, which has in recent months faced questions from media buyers over data showing print readership increases in the face of circulation declines, but argued it was “outperforming” its competitors in the declining print market.
“The EMMA data reaffirms News’ position as the country’s number one publisher, and a leader in the key categories that Australians are most interested in,” said a News Corp spokesman.
“While the best measure of Australia’s media consumption is readership, circulation data is still one area of focus for the company. The recently released ABC data shows we are outperforming our competitors in print and at the same time sales of key digital products continue to grow strongly.
“For instance, digital sales of The Australian Monday to Friday grew 17 per cent on a year on year basis, while digital sales of the Herald Sun are up 34 per cent year on year.”
Nic Christensen
“However, the number of new digital subscribers in the last 12 months more than offsets the decline in print sales in numbers, with The Age shedding 26,000 print editions but gaining 36,000 digital subscribers.” –
Yes, but digital subscriptions are worth a lot less to fairfax in $$ terms than print so this is not good news for publishers. As expected, growth in digital subs for both publishers is slowing to a trickle despite heavy discounting in the market. Those with highest propensity to pay are already paying and what’s left are those who won’t. Interesting to note that the slowdown has happened a lot quicker than it did for the New York Times..
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Sun herald and canberra times look terminal.
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Why subscribe?
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“News Corp also sought to highlight EMMA readership data”… Of course it would. The survey is a JOKE and it makes the print industry look like idiots. When are they ever going to learn. Stop wasting money on a flawed survey that nobody sees as credible (except for the people at News Corp).
Be honest, transparent and work together to bring back to life a wonderful industry.
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The print products all are nearing the point where they can’t support ad revenue. Digital is under priced in all cases.
If we get a recession, which looks likely, tragic events are unavoidable.
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Fairfax’s “fiercely independent journalism and content” could be part – most? – of the reason for their declines, and could see them go out the door backwards while they continue it.
People are fed up with the bias – the inmates are well in control of this asylum.
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@ Joe: it’s not just News Corp who are desperately clinging to EMMA data. The entire print industry is — its the only life raft they all have. IPSOS pull the EMMA data together so it “should” be credible. But to suggest — as EMMA does — that print readership is increasing, as circulation continues to fall, month on month, is patently absurd and undermines the credibility of all involved
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If Canberra Times wasn’t a backdoor through the Fairfax “paywall” its true level of unpolished turd would become obvious.
Salvage what you can (the cartoonist, a couple of decent journos) and send it back to the rural press dog pile from which it came.
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People don’t buy the paper on Sunday anymore because they are genuinely shit. The articles are full of trash, gossip and stories that are pointless.
Let’s not discuss the decline of the Saturday paper for now, but it’s not far behind…
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Clever Fairfax digital users can get most of their news content free via The Canberra Times site. this might restrict online sales to SMH Digital etc
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I used to be a regular reader of SMH. Not anymore. Would not even consider a digital subscription. Fairfax has become Melbourne-centric. If I wanted so much news about Melbourne radio, Melbourne film & TV, Melbourne entertainment, I’d subscribe to the Age. I don’t need it in the SMH.
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Sorry to disappoint you Rrrosco but the SMH is the most-read news publication in the country. The reason their print circ has declined is because most of their readers are digitally savvy and the cover prices keep shooting up.
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@ Bruce McKay: don’t need to go to CAnberra Times to get free SMH content – just deactivate your cookies and get all the content you want on the SMH site. Or read it on your phone – no paywall in place there
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Hmmm, single figure readership increases according to EMMA, double digit circ decreases according to ABC. Righto.
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@TheFacts
You’re full of it – http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/AU
Stop smoking the EMMA crack-pipe. Those readership numbers have nothing to do with reality and the industry knows it.
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@bob: CanTimes owned by Fairfax before rural press. In fact it was once highly regarded.
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I am ever amused at how the industry continues to talk up what are obviously very broken print newspaper products. Whatever the reason – cost, content, quality etc, fact is more and more people are turning away and that says to me, readers are now looking for something different. Check out www,orangecitylife.com.au or http://www.dubbophotonews.com.au and see what regional readers are embracing.
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@Numbers
“In fact it was once highly regarded.”
No debate from me on that front. But once it also had subeditors and such.
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I wonder where Joe works.
And Bob, have a good hard think and you will realise that there is very often an inverse correlation between circulation and readership.
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“There is very often an inverse correlation between circulation and readership.”
Hahhahahha.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the Advertising Industry.
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Bob, I will try and keep it simple with a fictitious example as to why this can (and does) happen.
There once was a very small town with its own newspaper. It only had 10 homes, and 30 people living there. But those 30 people in Bobtown were very proud of their newspaper The Bobtown Bugle.
The problem with the Bugle was that it was hand produced, but times and money were tight. The publisher, who ironically was also named Bob, tried hard to print 10 copies every day but couldn’t always do that. Bob was able to average 5 copies a day, but some days it was as low as just the one copy as Bob was adamant that he’d publish every day until the day he died.
In this one week, Bob was able to print all 10 copies on Monday, and each home bought their own copy. The problem was that it was a VERY slow news day. So, when the person who had bought the paper had read it and offered to pass it on in their home, the others in the home would say “Anything worth reading in the paper today?” to which they’d reply “Nah, it’s either a slow news day or Bob has been on the turps again”.
[I hope you can see that the paid circulation was 10, and the readership was 10 – or one reader per copy.]
Now on the Wednesday of that same week, the local district rugby league team, the Bobtown District Bandicoots, were playing in the Grand Final. Bobtown only had one player in the team, but Bobby was the Captain-Coach so this was a big deal.
Of course Bob went to the game being played a few towns away to get exclusive coverage and hopefully some pictures.
Bugger me dead if the Bandicoots didn’t come from behind, with Bobby crashing over for the winning try in the dying seconds. And Bob was there. And got the photograph as well as the story.
Celebrations went long into the night, but Bob had to head back to get the Bugle out as he always did. However, reliving the moment as he wrote his copy, Bob renewed the celebrations – it was after all Bobtown’s only premiership in living memory – and he got on the turps.
Come the morning, Bob woke with the first rays of the sun, and quickl7realised he hadn’t finished his copy. He dashed it off and started to print the Bugle.
Bugger. Double bugger! He’d run out of bloody ink because he’d forgotten to buy it amid the euphoria of the win.
He was kicking himself because after all these years of publishing, he’d managed to get sozzled on the turps and stuff up the print run of the biggest story to ever happen in Bobtown.
But Bob had just enough ink to print the one copy.
Good old Mrs. MacGillicuddy was on the doorstep as soon as Bob opened the doors, and she bought the one and only copy.
Being a stalwart of the town, Mrs. Mac did the right thing and posted that copy up outside Bob’s shop for the entire town to read and to help in celebrating their historical achievement.
[I hope you can see that the paid circulation was 1, and the readership was 30 – or 30 readers per copy.]
So, as you can see, circulation can go down and readership can go up, and vice versa.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the section of the Advertising Industry that understands that just because you get an unusual result does not mean that it is a wrong result.
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